In The Space Of Victory Park

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

The project of a residential multifunctional complex of elite class Victory park residences was approved by the Moscow Arch Council two years ago, and in September of the outgoing year, the developer, ANT Development, began sales and construction.

The site is located between the “entrance” eastern part of the Poklonnaya Gora park and the Kievskaya branch railway; from the Moscow-Sortirovochnaya station you can walk here in 5 minutes. Fonchenko Brothers Street runs along the western border of the complex, and a calm two-lane Poklonnaya Street separates the complex from the park. But to the east of the Victory park, it is planned to build an interchange leading from General Dorokhov Avenue and the Third Transport Ring towards Barclay Street. The complex retreats from the railway and from the interchange, respectively, by 50 and 25 meters.

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  1/5 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  2/5 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  3/5 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  4/5 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  5/5 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

The specificity of the environment is determined primarily by the neighborhood of Victory Park - according to Sergei Skuratov, "the grandiose creation of Anatoly Trofimovich Polyansky." The complex not only repeats the name of the park (in translation - "Residences of the Victory Park"), but also continues its planning grid, oriented at an angle to Kutuzovsky Prospect, from the stele in front of the museum to the Triumphal Arch of Osip Bove. Five buildings along Poklonnaya Street symbolically, on a reduced scale, respond to five transverse alleys - memorial squares in the front part of the park, marking the five years of the war, - says the author.

So, the northern line of residential buildings consists of five single-access towers, which allows the complex to be opened towards the Victory Park memorial complex, to emphasize the spatial connections with it and provide more views towards it. Three buildings along the southern border, on the contrary, are elongated longitudinally, they, like the transparent screens between them, are designed to close the yard from the railway - although the houses themselves, of course, are in every possible way protected from noise, primarily by reinforced double-glazed windows. Thus, the Victory park residential complex is turned "with its back" to the railway and "face" - to the Poklonnaya Gora park, as well as to the avenue and to the path from the metro of the same name.

I must say that the history of the site on which the complex is being built is rather complicated: in the mid-2000s, the largest oceanarium in Eastern Europe called Poseidon Park was planned here. A competition was held, construction began around 2008, a foundation pit was dug for two underground floors. The project uses the existing foundation pit, and the idea of the oceanarium "grew" into a complex multifunctional public space of the stylobate. Among the functions, a small one is preserved - about 3000 m² - an oceanarium in the western part, next to it a little to the north - a cinema and a children's center. In the northeastern corner of the stylobate, closer to the metro, there is an exhibition complex, in the southeastern part there is a fitness center with a spa and a swimming pool, and in the southwestern part there is a supermarket. The central space is occupied by a food court with a fishmarkt - a fish market, surrounded by cafes, shops and an inner boulevard. On the one hand, typologically it is a complicated shopping and entertainment center with elements of a public center, on the other, it looks like a city under a roof, grouped around a “market square”.

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  1/3 House on Fonchenko Street. Minus-first level © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  2/3 House on Fonchenko Street. Minus-first level, second tier © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  3/3 House on Fonchenko Street. Minus-second level © Sergey Skuratov architects

The public stylobate is located in the minus-ground floor, with a very high ceiling height - about 8 meters. Below, on the 2nd floor, there is an underground parking tier. In the construction of the stylobate, the relief difference was skillfully used - it is significant here, a little more than 12 meters, and convenient, since the relief is raised from the side of the park and the metro, which made it possible to organize barrier-free entrances and entrances along slopes, ramps and in a straight line, along a bridge. On the southern side, the elevation difference allowed, firstly, to open the facade of the pool in the fitness club for natural light, and secondly, to raise the private courtyard of residential buildings located on the roof of the stylobate, thus distancing it from the railway. Inside, the spaces are intertwined - literally tied - with ramps, escalators and travelators, so it's quite fascinating to look at the structure in section. In addition, residents of the houses will be able to go down to the public area by elevator directly from the apartments.

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  1/9 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  2/9 Section 8-8. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  3/9 Section 1-1. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  4/9 Section 2-2. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  5/9 Section 3-3. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  6/9 Section 4-4. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  7/9 Section 5-5. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  8/9 Cut 7-7. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  9/9 Section 6-6. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

In addition to the fact that this whole structure made it possible to answer the difficult technical task of the customer and fit the required program on the site, conveniently organizing it, it also forms a plastic intrigue. Already looking at the cuts and renders, you can feel that inside, thanks to all these differences, slopes and bridges, everything will not be trivial.

On the roof of the stylobate there is a courtyard of the residential complex with geoplastics and trees. Its surface is strictly horizontal, we recall that it rises 12-something meters above the passage from the side of the railway, and from the side of the park, approximately in the center of the northern facade, a bridge leads into it, along which it will be possible to enter the courtyard on foot and along it - enter from Poklonnaya Street onto the ramp leading to the underground parking. In front of the residential buildings on this side there is a gallery - a kind of "portico" with trees at the top; it delicately separates the courtyard of the residential complex from the city street.

If you can enter a residential courtyard from the north side in a straight line, then the entrances to the public parts of the stylobate, on the contrary, rise and fall. The raised "head" of the corten "snake" on the northern corner accentuates the entrance from the metro to the exhibition center. A similar "head of entrance" on the northwest corner, from the side of the park, leads to the aquarium and cinema.

But in both cases, you can walk in parallel - along the slope, smoothly deepening underground in the cozy wings of the inclined park.

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  1/3 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  2/3 Facade from the side of the UDKP overpass. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  3/3 Facade from the side of the railway. House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

The intrigue is that, in addition to the convenient separation of streams, we are constantly offered new spatial sensations, forced to experience space as open, closed, deliberately inclined or, on the contrary, with a straight surface under our feet. Different places have different colors and tones, different lighting angles; in short, here, in these drops and slopes, a lot of impressions, even from a simple walk, have been thought out. And note - from the top level, as a rule, you can look down and vice versa, they are also visually connected. It is assumed that here it will be possible to constantly feel the multi-tiered, multi-layered stylobate: there are about two tiers, and somewhere, from the side of the northern gallery, even three.

The gentle descents leading to the multifunctional stylobate are directed towards small open areas with café terraces - a kind of oasis of a comfortable environment, usually associated in our minds with the central regions of European cities. The recessed location protects them from the wind and makes them cozy, while the windows of cafes and shops facing here emphasize the urban character of the space, provoking movement between boutiques and café tables.

I must say that Sergei Skuratov, as he himself emphasizes in his

interview, has long been developing the topic of multi-level urban space - which is quite rare for Moscow and other post-Soviet cities, mostly predictably flat. Sergey Skuratov, as a rule, forms a spatial intrigue around his houses, one way or another affecting the city around him: it consists of powerful overhanging or "head-turning" consoles, of atypical paving with clinker bricks, pits that form quiet passages along shop windows, and, of course, of drops levels. His houses: Egodom and Art House, a house in Tessinsky-1 and Skouratov House on Burdenko Street - seem to even rejoice at the relief changes, since such drops are well adapted to the scenario of a "sculptural" city.

But, of course, the most complex multi-level spaces have been created in the Garden Quarters residential complex with their bridges in the courtyards, through the Road to School and a public square in the center: significant differences in artificial relief form at least three levels of perception and, in total, give a very special aesthetic tension even with a simple walk through the complex: he literally makes himself "read" not only horizontally, but also vertically, looking down and up, assessing the height and verticalism. Perhaps the Victory park residential complex is the most striking example of the development of the finds of the Garden Quarters. It will be interesting to walk on it after the completion of construction.

If in the public part glass and corten steel coexist, then on the main facades of the residential buildings facing the park there are stone and glass, and the floors are combined in two, the verticals gradually thin out from the side of the park, and the glass at the rounded corners is curved, which allows to emphasize the uniqueness of its “precious” texture: the futuristic glass resembles some kind of force field stretched between thin vertical lines.

The lintels are planned to be faced with light beige dolomite, similar in color to the stone of the facades of the Victory Museum - another tribute to the neighborhood of the memorial park. Note, however, that the color is slightly lighter than the "Stalinist" houses of Kutuzovsky Prospect, but still reminds of them; in addition, observing height restrictions, 10-11-storey buildings "pick up" the height of neighboring houses. But, since it is 330 m from the red line of Victory Park Avenue, from this side it looks like a remote quarter, partly hidden behind a hill: the houses seem even smaller in height than the chapel of St. George. So it is quite possible to support the words of Sergei Skuratov about the "dissolution" of the complex in space - now, in front of the Poklonnaya Gora park, the frontal urban development ends abruptly, and after the construction of the Victory park it will gradually recede, smoothly moving to a more rarefied - not a wall, but a number of separate volumes with a gradient series of vertical "stele" -parts, in the strict row of which, as in the color of the stone, you can also see the response to the pylonades of the Victory Museum.

Of the apartments, among which, given the premium class of housing, quite often there are spacious ones, with an area of up to 300 m² in penthouses, panoramic glass "on the floor" will open views of the park - on this side are the best lots.

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  1/3 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  2/3 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  3/3 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

The facades facing the courtyard differ from the external ones: it is planned to use reddish metal, corten or copper, and the private and rigid, vertically oriented mesh resembles a crystalline one - as if the “lime rocks” of houses were cut in straight lines and a courtyard was formed “in the gorge”. Above its hills and trees, however, like rocky consoles, balconies of different spacing hang over it - another level of space perception, already for the residents of the apartments.

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  1/4 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  2/4 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  3/4 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

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  4/4 House on Fonchenko Street © Sergey Skuratov architects

The facades of the three longitudinal, southern, buildings are solved somewhat differently, here there is more copper, wider piers and accentuated attic of penthouses. But here, too, copper meets stone in a gradient rhythm, which echoes the pattern of the side facades of the tower buildings.

Summing up, we can say that in the project of the Victory park residences residential complex there is a lot of Sergey Skuratov's “corporate” handwriting, so much so that it is probably time to start talking about the appearance in Moscow of a certain group of premium-class houses associated with his authorship. All of them are distinguished by great attention to the surrounding landscape, in a sense, they “grow” into or “grow out” of their site, forming a complex urban space around them - unusual for Moscow residents, and nevertheless determined by both the context and the characteristics of the territory, that is, "rooted" in its place. Another feature is the combination of a rather laconic modern form with textured, color and plastic variety: if you imagine these houses in a detour, they will always turn in some new perspective - the facades, like the multi-level space of the stylobate, will not let you get bored, but then at the same time, they are quite restrained. Only such a house should be built on the border with the main memorial park of Moscow - whose neighborhood, one way or another, obliges.